Coming Home
by UKHoneyB
Summary: Someone's heading back to what she knows...but who is it? Eternal hiatus.
1. Chapter 1

_Greetings from Café Café on the promenade.__ Okay, not really, but it is a good place to start this story off…_

Chapter One - 17th June, 2003: 

She stared out of the window, another person lost in her own mind and memories. The coffee placed in front of her had become cold half an hour ago, but none of the waiters had made any attempts to remove her from the restaurant. Whenever they tried, she always came back exactly half an hour later, ordered another coffee, and sat there, letting it grow cold.

_"Hurry, the building's going to explode!"_

Moving her hand from the coffee cup handle, she idly traced a scar across her left arm, half-healed and slightly raised.

Like her, the scar was numb.

_"You were lucky, a few more inches to the right and you would be dead by now."_

There was no sensation whatsoever on the scar, the only item revealing its presence was the unmarred, slightly tanned and whole skin on opposite sides. It wasn't the only scar she had, nor was the scar caused by someone new. She had two – no, the arm scar made three – scars from him, yet she had only managed to pay him back completely for one.

_"I thought Ma-Team Steel was trying to track down Psycho."_

She glanced slightly to the right, barely able to see the window out of the corner of her eyes, and vaguely noted that the sun was starting to set, sending lines of orange and gold across the sky. Grabbing her purse – more of a small backpack than a handbag – she dashed out of the restaurant in a hurry, causing both the customers and the waiters to look up in surprise as the doors slammed shut.

_"I need to get back there, I'm going to be taking a couple of weeks off work."_

"First time I've seen her rush out of here like that," one of the waiters muttered as he picked up the cold coffee and the tip she'd left behind. "Normally she stays for as long as she can."

ooooooooooooooo

She briefly shivered as the air-conditioned air his her bare arms, and she absent-mindedly rubbed them, trying to affect her circulation and warm her up, however slightly. She'd arrived at this very place five days, possibly a week ago, and yet the people who were waiting for delayed flights seemed to still be waiting, still curled up underneath the same jackets, using the same sweaters as pillows.

_"Why?"_

Children were still screaming at their parents, wanting their candy/GameBoys/attention, and their parents ignoring them for the most part, which just caused them to scream even louder. The woman sighed, pressing a hand to one of her temples, wishing that she hadn't left her aspirin back at the place she was supposed to call home.

_"Weren't you the one who ran from him, giving him no other options but to try and forget you."_

Finding a relatively quiet place to wait, she looked up at the arrivals board, seeing planes incoming from Sydney, Toronto, Zurich, Cape Town…but not from the one place she was looking for.

_"Del Oro Bay?__ That spot ain't no good for nobody but adrenaline junkies, no place for a woman like you."_

Finding her way over to yet another coffee place, she ordered a small cup and positioned herself so that she could attempt to drink it while keeping an eye on the arrivals board. She managed about three sips before giving up and abandoning the cup in the middle of the table.

_"Maybe I'm not the kind of woman you think I am."_

Coffee had never been her drug of choice, preferring instead to drink water. She never touched beer, never touched wine, never even touched coffee…except when trying to combat the inevitable. The last time she'd touched alcohol there had been a very nasty accident, the details of which are better left to the imagination.

_"You need to calm down on missions, the last thing you'd want would be to die, right?"_

She started at the sound of the intercom chiming, announcing the latest flight to have arrived before calming back down again. The flight was from Tel Aviv, nowhere near the place she was looking for.

_"'Calm down'? You really don't know me if you think saying that will achieve anything."_

"Flight BA284G from Orly Airport, Del Oro, is now disembarking at gate 17. If you are meeting anyone, please proceed to the arrivals gate…"

That was her cue. Grabbing her bag and leaving her unfinished coffee yet again, she wandered over to the arrivals gate, knowing full well that it would take an hour or so for the passengers to get off the plane, find their luggage and make it all the way to the arrivals gate. Good thing she had the foresight to bring a book with her, although she knew full well that she'd spend the next hour starting at the same page.

_"He's not going to feel the same way after all this time, you know that?"_

A few stragglers were still milling around the arrivals gate, families and friends talking to each other after what seemed to them like an eternity apart, but in reality was more like a couple of weeks.

_"Nothing's ever definite, nothing's ever set in stone."_

She looked up from her book almost exactly an hour later, having heard the noise of hundreds of footsteps approaching. Putting her book away, of which she was still reading page five, she tried to look casual as she scanned the civilians for a familiar figure, succeeding a few minutes later.

Fighting down the urge to rush over to him and explain breathlessly that she was coming back for good, she instead settled down for walking towards him, making their paths converge. Falling into step behind him lightly, she smiled at the fact that he hadn't even noticed her. Sure, she'd allowed her hair to grow out, but surely that hadn't changed her appearance too much, had it?

Taking a deep breath of air, she tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around almost instantly, surprise registering on his face when he saw who it was.

"Hello, Mr. Steel."

"Rachel…"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two - 17th June, 2003: 

"_Hello, Mr. Steel."_

"_Rachel…"_

Max looked at Rachel, almost in disbelief. She looked exactly the same as she had done two years ago, with the exception of her hair, which was now past her shoulders and almost reaching waist-length. She wasn't tanned; he doubted that she'd even want to sunbathe, or even go out in the sun without some kind of sunblock.

"I thought you'd left," Max said bluntly, and Rachel shrugged her shoulders, a very non-Rachel thing to do.

"I came back," she said just as bluntly, before realizing that they were blocking the way of other passengers. "Come on, we'd better find a less crowded area," she added, grabbing Max's free arm and dragging him through the airport, heading back towards the coffee place she had vacated just over an hour before.

"_Why didn't you tell me you were going to promote Rachel?"_

Sitting down at the same table, Rachel ordered two white coffees, one for herself and one for Max, despite not knowing if he drunk coffee or not. Neither made any attempt at talking while they waited for their coffee; instead, Rachel began scratching the skin around a scab, then began to pick it in nervousness.

"It'll start bleeding again," Max said, no emotion in a voice, almost sounding like a parent telling their child not to pick their scabs for the thousandth time, and getting beyond caring about the fact.

"_Would you have attempted to block the promotion if you had known?"_

"I don't care," Rachel said, her eyes focused on a burn mark on the table. "Some of the injuries I've received were a lot worse."

"It doesn't mean that it won't hurt and bleed if you keep picking it."

"_No, I wouldn't. She'd be happy, I…I don't want to prevent that."_

"Steel, I don't care. I'm not your child, you're not my father, so just quit it." Rachel picked her scab one last time, then folded her arms on the table, and stared at Max. "Happy now?"

"A little," Max said grudgingly, wondering where this new personality had come from. It was more defensive, more on edge, more…like Kat.

"_Hermano, she's gone to Russia."_

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing," Rachel snapped quickly, then was all smiles and cheerful when the waitress brought their coffee up. "Nothing beyond what's considered normal for us, anyway." She reached over and grabbed four packets of sugar, opening each and dumping the contents into her coffee one by one.

"You can't fool me, Rache. Do you honestly think no one can see your scars?"

"_Yeah, I know, Jeff sent her on a mission there, to capture Psycho."_

Rachel blanched for a moment, then hid her face behind her coffee cup as she took a sip. One single, very small sip before she slammed the cup back onto the table with a look of revulsion on her face.

"There's a reason it tastes so bitter: you forgot to stir the sugar in." Max was holding a teaspoon in his hand, which Rachel grabbed and dunked into the coffee. "I thought you didn't drink coffee, anyway."

"I don't," she snapped, taking another sip of coffee, this time managing to take a couple without spitting the liquid back out. "Not usually, anyway."

"_No, I meant for good. She told me just before she left. She didn't want you to know."_

"Then why drink it now?" Max asked, genuinely curious. Realizing that he hadn't even touched his own coffee, he dumped the contents of a packet of sugar into his cup, stirred and attempted to drink it.

"Because…" Rachel began, then shook her head. "Do you really need to know?"

"I'm just curious."

"That's not a good answer, Steel. Is the reason behind myself drinking coffee when I usually don't important to your next assignment?"

"It isn't, but –"

"Then stop asking me." Rachel slammed her cup down onto the table again, this time spilling some coffee over the sides and onto the hand holding the cup.

"_Jeez, what is _with _you today, Steel? It's like you _want _to be captured, sliced up and examined by nutso scientists."_

"It doesn't hurt," Rachel lied as Max went to grab some paper napkins. "I've had worse," she added when Max looked at her quizzically. She took the napkins and began mopping up the spill on the table before pushing her cup away and tossing some money onto the table, enough to cover the cost of the drinks plus a tip.

"_It's Rachel, she…she's on a long-term mission to Russia, and I had to hear it second-hand."_

"Don't you need to get back to N-Tek?" Rachel said as she stood up, and Max nodded slowly. "Well, why don't you get going?" she added, quickly walking out of the café, Max following a few startled moments later.

"Aren't you heading home? How are you going to get there?"

"I'm going back to N-Tek too," she said, smiling for the first time since meeting Max. "And, as we're asking twenty questions, why are you in 'Max' mode?"

"I…can't answer that, Rache. Well, I could, but it'd be confusing, disjointed and probably make no sense. It'd be better to wait until we get back to N-Tek for the full answer, Berto'd probably be able to answer it better than me."

"_I don't understand it, but…the probes seem to have somehow reset themselves."_

Max made his way to the long-term car park, easily identifying his bright blue convertable car out of all of the other cars, partly because it was so easily recognizable.

"I'm surprised, Steel," Rachel said as she got into the car and put the seatbelt on. "I would have thought you would have had a different car after four years."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Max asked as he started the ignition and began to reverse out of his parking space.

"Rumors fly, even in Russia. The current rumor is that you change girlfriends as often as you do clothes, and you don't keep anything which would remind you of them. This car, for example, would remind you of both myself and Laura."

"_What does that mean?"_

There was no such rumor; Rachel was just trying to goad Max into saying something, but she didn't know why, or even what she wanted him to say. Instead, he said nothing during their drive to N-Tek, only announcing the building when they arrived.

"_Hermano, it means you're stuck in Max mode. Permanently."_


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three - 17th June, 2003: 

There was a reason Max announced the building as that of N-Tek: it was very different from the N-Tek Rachel had last seen. Instead of it being a simple, three-storey building with an odd bulge in the architectural 'antenna' (being, of course, the transphasic regenerator) and the real spy stuff being underground, it was now a cluster of buildings, each about two stories high. The main building was still there, but it had been elevated to five stories, and as such the transphasic regenerator had been effectively swallowed by the topmost floor.

Rachel said nothing to this, simply getting out of the car before it had completely stopped moving and effectively stormed into the building, expecting to be challenged by no one and recognized by everyone. After all, she did have a (very brief) relationship with the boss' son.

"_I'm leaving N-Tek. I don't know how long for, or even if will be permanent, but I don't want you to tell Josh, understood?"_

As she predicted, Rachel was unchallenged as she strolled through N-Tek's corridors, having only minor problems with the slightly updated security systems. This, fortunately, was rectified by one of the junior agents recognizing Rachel and allowing her through using his own biometric data.

Wandering through the hallways for a good five minutes, she eventually found what she had been looking for: Team Steel's op room. The door opening automatically, Rachel smiled slightly at the sight before her. Berto was sitting at the console, nothing new there, and was completely engrossed in a game of circular chess with the computer on the largest monitor in the room.

"_What am I supposed to tell him then?"_

"Things never change much here, do they?" she said after a few minutes, making Berto jump in surprised. "Junior agents are still letting anyone through biometrically-locked doors, and you're still obsessed with beating that computer."

"Rachel, what are you doing here, aren't you supposed to be in –"

"Russia? I came back. I've got some information which Jeff needs to know, and I didn't think it was safe to send it through the usual channels of communication. Russia's security agency has more holes than Swiss cheese, and is more corrupt and hypocritical than the BNP. British political party," she added at Berto's look of mild confusion.

"_What everyone else is telling him: I'm on a mission in Russia_ _to capture Psycho."_

"What do you need to tell him? I'm sure I could relay the information to you. Other than that, there's no need for you to be here. Why don't you go home, get some rest –"

"If you're trying to unsuccessfully tell me to give the information to you and go home so I won't meet Max, it won't work. I've already met him."

Berto looked at Rachel. "How, when? He didn't finish his mission until a few hours ago…" he trailed off as comprehension dawned. "You met him at the airport, didn't you?"

"_I can't do that."_

Rachel nodded.

"Intentionally or on purpose?"

"On purpose. It wasn't that hard, get one of my colleagues in Russia to hack into the security systems here and find the mission schedules for one Max Steel, aka Josh McGrath." Rachel smirked. "You really need to upgrade the security here, Berto. It only took us about ten minutes to get in. But then, considering the ease in which a junior agent let me in this section of N-Tek, that's not really a surprise."

Berto frowned. "When we knew about Dragonelle, we informed all of our agents not to let anyone into secure sections, even if they looked exactly like themselves and especially if they didn't have the clearance for that room."

"Sounds like your agents need re-educating."

"_Why not?"_

Berto nodded. "Yes, sounds like it. They've been getting a bit lax about security here, seeing as no one but Psycho has ever managed to break in. Even then he was doing it on inside information."

Rachel bit her lip at this, knowing that the information she needed to tell Smith included this intrusion into N-Tek. She turned around, ready to make her way out of the ops room, when Berto verbally stopped her.

"How was Max? Meeting you, I mean."

"Surprised, very surprised," Rachel said, turning back around and folding her arms across her chest. "Which reminds me, why was he in 'Max' mode in a supposedly safe, secure aeroplane? Surely he would have changed back into Josh before boarding the plane."

"_I'd be lying to my best friend."_

"Well…" Berto began, looking down at the ground and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose in slight embarrassment. "It was a mission about a year ago, a mission against two new terrorists known as Pyro and Cryo."

"The Greek for fire and ice," Rachel mused, looking up when she felt Berto's eyes on her.

"I'm surprised you know what they mean, Max didn't."

"Pyromania and cryogenics, basically the attraction to fire and the freezing of a body in ice," Rachel said, slightly embarrassed. "How I know isn't important to the story anyway, why did these two cause Max's probes to malfunction?"

"I'm not entirely sure of it myself, but I have a suspicion that when he was fighting Pyro, the extreme heat caused by her attacks somehow fried the circuitry in the max probes, leaving them unable to change Max back into Josh."

Rachel thought from a minute before speaking. "But, if the circuitry was damaged enough to prevent Max from being able to turn back into Josh, what about his other abilities? Enhanced sight, enhanced hearing, turbo and stealth mode?"

"_It's not lying. Well, not completely. I will be in Russia, but I'm not chasing after Psycho."_

Berto shook his head. "It's all completely gone. We're working on trying to reconstruct the probes inside his body, but so far it hasn't been working. The only solution we've found is to destroy all the probes in his body and then, effectively, 're-infect' him with working probes, which should give him back his usual powers, plus enable him to change back into Josh once more."

"Have you told Max this?"

"No."

**A/N:** Blackrose, Akili, remember what I said about this only being four parts? It seems to have gained a mind of its own now, so I have no idea how long it's gonna end up being.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four – 17th June 2003:

She found Kat in one of the training rooms, a towel around her neck, a few beads of sweat forming on her forehead and looking a bit flushed but, other than that, she looked exactly as she did when Rachel left. Same clothing choice, same hairstyle, same jewellery.

"Hey Rachel," Kat said when she walked past the senior agent, giving no hint of shock or surprise that Berto and Max had shown. "Good trip, did you manage to catch Psycho?"

"_Hey Rachel, what're you doing here? Thought you'd forget about us 'lower' agents being your friends now you're our boss."_

"No and no," Rachel said, shaking her head sadly. "Does news travel faster than the speed of light or did Jeff tell you?"

"That you're coming back?" Kat nodded as she grabbed a water bottle and took a long gulp. "Yep, I knew. Seems like I'm the only one who's kept up to speed on international events, especially those involving the boss' son."

Rachel's eyes narrowed, though she didn't say anything. Yes, she was…attracted to him in that way, but the kiss was what she thought would have been the less harmful option. With the benefit of hindsight, she would have slapped him instead.

"_Psycho can be a real illegitimate child sometimes."_

"So, since you managed to completely miss Psycho in your mission, what have you been chasing down in the snowy north?" Kat asked, walking over to her locker and opening it, dumping her towel inside.

"Mainly chasing down minor Russian and ex-Soviet Union criminals. Anything major was sent back to the Russian base. Apparently we didn't have the expertise or experience to deal with anything more important."

"That's bureaucracy for you," Kat said, pulling off her sweat-stained top and grabbing a clean one from her locker. "Always tells you what you can't do, never what's actually allowed."

"_You know, you've had a real stick up your butt since you got that promotion."_

Now that Rachel had gotten over the shock of seeing Kat, and her knowing more than should be expected, she noticed something different, something not quite right with the younger agent. Nothing physical, it seemed more like the way she moved, not so sure –

Rachel looked up from the floor, where she had been staring, and into Kat's angry green eyes.

"I think the cold's got into your ears, Rachel. You're going deaf. I asked you a question, and here you are, far away in dream-land with Steel."

"…sorry," Rachel said after a pause.

"_I'm being sent to Russia. Permanently."_

"I asked, are you going to be coming to the meeting later, or are you here on a temporary basis?"

"I'll be coming to the meeting. What's it on?"

Kat laughed quickly before shaking her head. "Smith calls you back, and he doesn't even say what for? Well, you've dealt with fire and ice before, haven't you?"

"Pyro and Cryo?" Rachel asked, once her brain had caught up.

"So you know something, at least."

"Curteosy of Martinez."

"At this rate, you'll've bumped into everyone before the meeting even starts." Kat slammed her locker shut twice, after it refused to close the first time. "Pyro and Cryo Triantis, twins from Greece, and they're a right pain. Had more than one suspicion that they were infused with those Dread probes."

"_So that means I'm gonna be stuck with college-boy permanently now? Thanks a lot, Rachel."_

"How'd you know about them?"

"Simple case of me finding all of your mission logs and records and reading them. I noticed you 'forgot' to put the little infraction between yourself and Steel a thousand feet underwater."

"It wasn't necessary to the mission," Rachel said, feeling her cheeks beginning to heat up. Although the kiss between her and Max was common-knowledge amongst the N-Tek agents, any mention of it was likely to send her into volumes of denial, especially since it had happened almost three years ago.

"_You're welcome."_

"Of course not," Kat said with a grin that said she knew all too well the truth. "Meeting starts at 1500 hours," she added, and Rachel quickly looked at her watch: fifteen minutes to get to the briefing room.

Rachel glanced up at Kat, a battle going on in her mind: whether to go to the meeting and be surrounded by people she hadn't seen in over two years, or to ignore it and potentially be left out of the loop.

"It's not gonna be anything important; at least, not anything you won't be able to hear from me. So, where do want me to begin?" Kat asked.

Rachel smiled weakly. "I heard the beginning's always a good place to start."

oooooooooo

A/N: Starting next chapter, I'll be going back about a year, when Max first encountered Pyro and Cryo and lost the max powers. Also, thank god I only had to write two pages (well, one and a half) of this: I had very little idea what Rachel and Kat would talk about: they were murder to write!


End file.
